He unlocked the bedroom door and led her to the balcony.
CHAPTER X—A Pinch of Snuff
Three hours later Carpentaria, whose thoughts had been bent upon some solution of the problem set by Juliette’s strange and incomprehensible love affair with Josephus Ilam, was obliged to devote his brains to other and not less disturbing matters. He received in his study, for the second time that day, young Rivers, the newly-admitted doctor who had been officially attached to the City of Pleasure. A medical cabinet and a pharmacy had been judged quite indispensable to the smooth running of the City, and the foresight which had provided them was entirely justified by the numerous small accidents, faintings, and indispositions that marked the opening day, when more than three hundred persons had patronized the pharmacy, and more than twenty had received the attentions of the ardent young doctor.
Carpentaria had first met young Rivers when this youth was walking Bart’s, and the accession of Rivers to the brilliant and brilliantly remunerated position of physician and surgeon-in-ordinary to the City of Pleasure was due to Carpentaria’s influence. Rivers was grateful, very grateful. Moreover, he liked Carpentaria, thought him, in fact, the most wonderful man, except Lord Lister, that he had ever met.
“Well,” said the fair youth of twenty-five, when Carpentaria had shut the study-door, “I’ve made the analysis. It comes out to just about what I expected.”
“Prussic acid?”
“Not exactly prussic acid. A soluble cyanide—cyanide of potassium. Have you by any chance got a photographic bureau concealed somewhere in the show?”
“Why, of course,” said Carpentaria. “Didn’t you know? It’s next door to the lecture-hall.”